For an otherwise forgettable season Melbourne’s ill-fated 2009 wooden spoon campaign remains a hot topic five years later, with its long-term effect on the club again in the spotlight after Paul Roos’ claim in the wake of his side’s capitulation against the Brisbane Lions that “tanking has put the club where it is”.

Suggesting that the club’s abysmal recent record of just 10 wins since the start of 2012 can be traced directly to the period five years ago when the club was accused of deliberately avoiding winning matches to secure prized priority draft picks is drawing a long bow, but when a highly paid premiership coach talks people listen. Roos was not alone in connecting the dots either, writing in the Age this week Caroline Wilson described Melbourne’s 2009 season and its aftermath as “one of the game’s most haunting cautionary tales”.

While the club has enjoyed little success since, the idea that the impact of the ‘tanking’ saga is still being felt ignores both short-term advances made by the Demons at the time and an incredible run of both controllable and uncontrollable off-field disasters since. The grim reality is that while tying the club’s current struggles to 2009 absolves much of the current playing list of blame, that season bears little responsibility for the mess Roos is now tasked with untangling.

If the series of limp defeats that allowed Melbourne to choose first and second in 2009’s draft destroyed the fabric of the club then the damage took some time to set in. After winning just four games the previous season they tasted success three times in the first five rounds of 2010, and late in that year a list made up largely of the same players who had slogged through 2009 remained in contention to play finals.

In round 17 that year they dealt Roos his greatest loss as Sydney coach, a 72-point defeat that prompted then Brisbane Lions coach Michael Voss to suggest Melbourne could be the league’s “next superpower”. In the same season Mark Jamar and James Frawley became the last Demons to be named in the All-Australian team and the incumbent administration was hailed for the sudden turnaround. Any lingering ill-feeling from 2009 was not reflected by the side’s on-field performance.

It was at the end of that season that trouble began brewing. With his side now bolstered by highly rated draftees Bailey forced popular captain James McDonald into retirement, and was forced to deny that youngster Tom Scully had left a trip to China because of the drunken antics of team-mates. The former No1 draft pick would bolt to the GWS Giants at the end of 2011.

Despite these distractions Melbourne were inside the top eight as late as round 14 in 2011, but behind the scenes a bitter feud was raging between Bailey and CEO Cameron Schwab. In documenting Melbourne’s descent into disaster Wilson does not allude to ‘tanking’, and the playing group managed to put together a season and a half of solid if rarely unspectacular performances despite looming civil war.

As the end of the season approached Bailey was set to win the battle and a contract extension, while Schwab’s tenure would be allowed to expire. Then the Demons suffered the greatest defeat of the modern era, a 31 goal loss to Geelong referred to by many shell-shocked Melbourne fans simply as ‘186’, and plans were changed. Bailey was dismissed, while Schwab remained CEO and eventually won a three-year contract extension in August 2012, only to be sacked seven months later.

The advances of 2010 were quickly forgotten in the wake of that massive defeat, and the club has never recovered. Highly rated Collingwood assistant Mark Neeld was handed the task of overseeing the rebuild of Bailey’s team, but the downward spiral continued under his leadership and he was dismissed after just five wins in 33 games. The decision to remove experienced players from leadership positions and replace them with youngsters Jack Grimes and Jack Trengove was seen to be another in a long list of disastrous decisions since 2010.

And then there is the Demons’ inability to develop a raft of top draft picks into superstars. It’s likely that if the four top-20 picks they ‘earned’ for finishing last in 2009 had lived up their potential, then the repercussion of the ‘tanking season’ would be seen in an entirely different light.

There’s no doubt both Roos and the club’s administration have made significant progress this year., one of the areas that Roos immediately addressed was their notoriously leaky defence. They conceded an average of 122 points per match last year, and in 2014 this has been reduced to just 83 – at this point their best defensive result since 1971. This season the Demons have lost six games by under 20 points, and in several of those they found themselves within a goal late in the last quarter. Additionally he has empowered players to take the lead in reviews of the Brisbane game and has not resorted to knee-jerk reactions at the selection table when the tide has turned against his side.

Of course issues remain – the club are currently on target to record one of the lowest points-per-game averages for any club in a 22 game season – but it is simplistic to point the finger solely at that strange period in 2009 when some fans actively cheered against their own side (although this practice isn’t limited to the AFL). Just 12 players from that year’s senior list remain on the team, and some like Colin Garland and Nathan Jones have gone on to become stalwarts during a dark period in the club’s history. The new regime has had a noticeable impact on the side’s performances, but by continually raising the past Roos risks coming across like a politician who ritually blames the previous government for what he himself cannot control.

This season has four weeks left, and so does Roos’s prerogative to blame the sins of others for the problems of today.